Lucy Faust was a typical Lululemon Athletica Inc. customer. Introduced to the brand as a teenager, she bought activewear from the company for several years.
“They were the first big brand to sort of do athleisure and prioritize a comfortable fabric,” Faust said.
But as Lululemon grew, Faust, now 28, felt the quality and durability of the products began to decline. In the end, the company lost her. She stopped buying from them.
“I wouldn’t say they’re the trendiest brand these days,” she said of Lululemon.
Today, while Lululemon leggings are still popular, they’re losing their place as the go-to garment for the teen and college set. Young people are trending towards boxier and baggier bottoms, as well as other leggings brands.
As a result, Lululemon is at a critical juncture. Changing fashion trends, turnover, and new competition are all threatening to push the company further down its negative trajectory. At a time when consumers are starting to hold their pocketbooks more tightly, a failure to win back key shoppers could knock Lululemon off the athleisure podium it built.
“This isn’t a flash in the pan trend,” said Brian McGough, co-founder of Hedgeye Risk Management.
The company has already had a difficult year. Sales have decelerated in recent months: Year-over-year revenue growth for the company has shrunk from more than 18% in October 2023 to just over 7% in its most recent quarterly filing.
And all of that has had an impact on Lululemon’s stock. The share price has plunged more than 37% since the beginning of the year, in one of the worst performances of stocks in the S&P 500 Index. Sportswear stock as a category is softening, but Lululemon’s stock has plummeted even further than its competitors.
Lululemon originally gained market share by emphasizing community and an upmarket shopping experience, with leggings that came in many more sizes than the typical small, medium and large.
“It’s still the company that drove the whole athleisure trend,” said David Swartz, an analyst at Morningstar. “From the beginning, from its IPO, it’s always been kind of an expensive stock and kind of a cult stock.”
Over the last decade, the per capita growth in leggings sales across the industry has been “remarkable,” according to McGough, who believes a significant share of sales and cash flow at the company can be attributed just to leggings.
But now the trend has lost steam, he said, and Lululemon has yet to fully adjust.
“It’s got this negative cycle going against it,” McGough said.
Teen girls, a core Lululemon demographic, are trending away from the company. In a survey of more than 13,500 teens across 47 states, investment bank Piper Sandler found that the share of girls ranking the company as their top fashion trend had dropped from 41% last fall to 27% today.
Part of that may be the rise of baggier silhouettes for women. Younger generations started the trend, which is now trickling up to Millenial and Gen X shoppers, said Nicole Craig, an instructor at Arizona State University’s Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising.
Consumers have gotten bored after years of tight silhouettes, and the pandemic helped that process along, Craig said.
“Everybody was very much in our houses wearing ‘soft pants’ as the trend was,” she said. Once that was over, people were excited to go back to dressier styles, “but there’s also a little bit of, ‘I don’t know that I need to go back to where I was.’”
Leggings retailers, including Lululemon, have indeed started to introduce baggier silhouettes, Craig said, including performance sweatpants and flared yoga pants.
However, adjusting to new trends will likely be slower at Lululemon. High turnover on the product design side includes the departure of long-time chief product officer Sun Choe to Vans earlier this year and the death of global creative director Phil Dickinson in 2023. (Lululemon declined to comment for this story.)
Filling positions can take time, said Michael Binnetti, an analyst at Evercore ISI.
“When the fashion cycle changes and you’re also kind of in the middle of changing out your team, most likely you’re going to be the one who misses it,” he said.
Even within the leggings market, Lululemon is losing out to new competition. Yoga brands Alo and Vuori are making headways with core Lulu shoppers.
Despite its challenges, many analysts and experts are still optimistic about Lululemon’s potential.
The company has a new product designer starting in January, which is likely to help the company stay on trend, Binnetti said. There is also growth potential in China, where the market is not yet saturated. Comparable sales in China grew by 23% last quarter over a year prior. The country represents 13% of total revenue.
Though Lululemon has lost ground with teen girls, it still beat out any other brand as far as the top trend in Piper Sandler’s survey.
And while leggings are on the downswing, they are likely to come back, said Craig, at ASU. Athleisure as a category is still strong.
Analysts estimate revenue will increase to $10.41 billion in the fiscal year ending January 2025, up a little more than 8% from the prior year. On average, they expect the company to make $1.64 billion in profit this year, a little under 6% higher than last year.
Many analysts and experts suggest Lululemon needs to offer added colors and styles to give shoppers something new they can add to their closet.
“At the price points that they charge, they have to really have all the bells and whistles,” Craig said. “Retailers have to be really on their game to capture the share of the market that they need. Because if they don’t, someone else will.”